all Israeli's are settlers ...
Correct.
... as the entire country was barren wasteland 60 years ago.
Incorrect.
electronicintifada.net
Israel "made the desert bloom"
Written by Arjan El Fassed. Edited by Laurie King-Irani.
Myth
Israel and its supporters claim that Zionist settlers transformed the land
from a barren desert into a fertile land of milk and honey. Hence, they hold
that Palestinians only became interested in their own state upon
witnessing the purported "successes" of Zionist attempts to develop and
revitalize the land. This stance also provides some Zionists with
justification for their claim that the Palestinians had not been good
stewards of the land, and thus did not deserve to have any rights to it.
Facts
Israel's claim that it "made the desert bloom" is a wild exaggeration that
vastly overstates the extent of Jewish achievements while grossly
underestimating Palestinian cultivation and the natural fertility of
Palestine.
Climate
Only half of the area of Palestine has a true desert climate. This area
consists of the Negev desert, stretching south from Bi'r as-Saba' to the
Gulf of Aqaba. The remaining half of Palestine has a typical Mediterranean
climate, and enjoys substantial rainfall for half of every year (roughly
October to April). The soils in this second area of Palestine are naturally
fertile. The average annual rainfall in Tel Aviv, for example, totals 539
mm., 639 mm. in Nazareth, and 486 mm. in Jerusalem.
Agricultural development prior to Jewish immigration
It was the Palestinians who expanded agricultural production and
sustainable and environmentally appropriate techniques during the 18th
and 19th centuries before the arrival of European Jewish settlers. The
success of Palestinian agrigulture is best illustrated by olive horticulture in
central Palestine, which constituted the basis of the region's productive
economy in the 18th century (see Beshara Doumani's book, Rediscovering
Palestine). Cooking oil, lamp oil, soaps and other products derived from
Palestinian olive trees enriched many areas during this period, particularly
that of Nablus.
The 'Israeli' Jaffa orange
Another example is the Jaffa orange. Now assumed as an Israeli product,
this orange species had already been developed by Palestinian
agriculturalists before the Zionist colonisation of Palestine began in
earnest. In 1886, the American consul in Jerusalem, Henry Gillman, called
attention to the excellent quality and superior grafting techniques of
Palestinian citrus farmers. "I am particular in giving the details of this
simple method of propagating this valuable fruit [the Jaffa orange] as I
believe it might be adopted with advantage in Florida" (US Government,
Documents of the Jerusalem Consulate (Gillman to Porter), 16 December
1886.
Land under cultivation prior to 1947-48 War
By 1930, all the land capable of being cultivated by the indigeneous
Palestinians with the resources available to them was already under
cultivation (Frances Newton, Fifty Years in Palestine, Coldharbor, 1940, p.
253). Sir John Hope Simpson undertook a comprehensive study of
Palestinian agricultural potential in 1930. He concluded that
"it has emerged quite definitely that there is at the present
time and with the present methods of Arab cultivation no
margin of land available for agricultural settlements by new
immigrants"
(Palestine, Report on immigration, land settlement and
development, Sir John Hope Simpson, cmnd 3686, His
Majesty's Stationery Office, 1930).
By the end of the British Mandate in 1947, the total land area under
cultivation by Palestinian farmers (excluding citrus) was 5,484,700
dunums, whereas the area cultivated by Jewish farmers was only 425,450
dunums. The expansion of the cultivated area offered in the Israeli
repertoire is grossly exaggerated. The figures have been doctored by
including, as reclaimed land, the huge areas of farmland left behind by the
Palestinian refugees expelled by Israel in 1948.
Subcommittee II of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question,
established in September 1947 issued a report in November 1947 which
stated under item 63:
"The village statistics for 1945 prepared by the Palestine
administration and showing the position as at 1 April 1945
furnish interesting data regarding land ownership in Palestine.
The total Arab land ownership is given in dunums (4 dunums
equals approximately 1 acre), as being 12,574,774, as against
a total Jewish ownership of 1,491,699. [...] The following
figures are of particular interest:
CATEGORY OF CROPS OWNERSHIP
Arabs Jews (in dunums)
Citrus 135,368 139,728
Bananas 1,843 1,079
Plantations 1,052,222 94,167
Taxable cereals (categories 9-13) 5,653,346 869,109
Taxable cereals (categories 14-15) 823,046 67,839
Item 64 of that same report stated:
"The above statistics of population and of land ownership
prove conclusively that the Arabs constitute a majority of the
population of the proposed Jewish State, and own the bulk of
the land"
(Source: Doc. C74 UNSCOP Report to the UNGA, Documents on Palestine,
vol. 1, pp. 165, PASSIA, December 1997).
Some historical references to Palestinian agriculture, from the 10th
Century to 1946
In the late 10th century, a visitor wrote,
"Palestine is watered by the rains and the dew. Its trees and
its ploughed lands do not need artificial irrigation. Palestine is
the most fertile of the Syrian provinces"
[Guy Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems (Beirut,
Lebanon, Khayat, 1965), 28.].
Before he died in 986 AD, Muqqadisi, who lived in Jerusalem, told of
Palestine produce that
"was particularly copious and prized: fruit of every kind (olives,
figs, grapes, quinces, plums, apples, dates, walnuts, almonds,
jujubes and bananas), some of which were exported, and
crops for processing (sugarcane, indigo and sumac)"
[quoted in Walid Khalidi, Before Their Diaspora (Washington,
DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1984), 28-29.}
In 1615, Englishman George Sandys described Palestine as
"a land that flows with milk and honey,"
with
"no part empty of delight or profit"
[quoted in Richard Bevis, "Making the Desert Bloom: An
Historical Picture of Pre-Zionist Palestine," The Middle East
Newsletter, Vol. 2, Feb.-Mar., 1971, p.4].
In 1859, a British missionary described the southern coast of Palestine as
"a very ocean of wheat,"
observing that
"the fields would do credit to British farming"
[quoted from James Reilly, "The Peasantry of Late Ottoman
Palestine," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 10 No. 4, 1981, p.
84].
Between 1856 and 1882, the German geographer Alexander Scholch
found that in those years,
"Palestine produced a relatively large agricultural surplus which
was marketed in neighboring countries," and to Europe
[Alexander Scholch, "The Economic Development of Palestine, 1856-1882,"
Journal of Palestinian Studies, Vol 10, No. 3, 1981, 36-58].
In 1887, Lawrence Oliphant visited the Esdralon Valley that prompted him
to marvel at the
"huge green lake of waving wheat, with its village-crowned
mounds rising from it like islands; and it presents one of the
most striking pictures of luxuriant fertility which it is possible
to conceive"
[quoted from Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, ed., The Transformation of Palestine
(Chicago, IL: Northwestern Press, 1971), 126].
In 1893, the British Consul advised his government of the value of
importing trees from Jaffa to improve production in Australia and South
Africa
[Beheiry, p. 67].
In 1939, Palestine exported over 15 million cases of citrus fruit
[A Survey of Palestine, Vol. 1, 337].
In 1942, Palestine produced nearly 305,000 tons of grains and legumes
[A Survey of Palestine, Vol.I, 320].
In 1943, Palestine produced 280,000 tons of fruit, excluding citrus fruits
[Statistical Abstract of Palestine, 1944-45, 226].
In 1945, Palestine had over 600,000 dunums of land planted with olive
trees, producing nearly 80,000 tons of olives, and accounting for 1
percent of the olive oil production for the WORLD [Statistical Abstract of
Palestine, 1944-45, (Department of Statistics, Government of Palestine),
225], and produced nearly 245,000 tons of vegetables. [A Survey of
Palestine, for the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Vol.I, 325-26].
In 1946, Walter C. Lowdermilk, Assistant Chief of US Soil Conservation
Service, examined Palestine, and compared it to California, except that
"the soils of Palestine were uniformly better"
[Palestine's Economic Future: A Review of Progress and
Prospects (London, UK: Percy Lund Humphries and Co., Ltd.,
1946), 19-23. |
